Cannibalism poses significant challenges in crustacean culture and research. Research on the tropical rock lobster (Panulirus ornatus), has identified key physiological, behavioural, and chemosensory mechanisms facilitating cannibalism. Behavioural assays, chemoreceptor ablation, transcriptomics, and separation sciences illustrate how cannibalistic lobsters sense a potential victim and subsequently attack and consume it. In the case of the tropical rock lobster, lobsters about to moult their exoskeleton are undergoing physiological change, including the synthesis and degradation of chitin. A metabolite of this process (N-acetylglucosamine-6-phosphate) has been found in moult fluid, and lobsters display attractive behaviour to its synthetic form, as well as water conditioned by moulting lobsters releasing this and other metabolites. The moulting process is highly conserved in arthropods, reasoning that many crustaceans release similar cues into the marine environment during moulting. This knowledge provides opportunity for habituation, reducing cannibal interest in moulting biomarkers. Alternatively, stimulus control may be applied within specially designed systems to encourage migration of potential inter-moult cannibals into a space isolated from vulnerable pre-moult crustaceans. Novel insights into the sensory ecology and behavioural context of crustacean cannibalism offers potential chemical and systems strategies to enhance survival rates and sustainability in culture for research, wild stock enhancement, and aquaculture.